The Trial

Welles translates one of Franz Kafka’s best-known literary works into a disorienting black-and-white cinematic world of crime and punishment. After relatively anonymous bank officer Josef K. (Anthony Perkins) is spontaneously arrested and charged with an unnamed crime, he struggles in vain to discover exactly what it is he has done. While Kafka’s novel is famed for its psychological modernism, Welles’ film delves deep into the psyche of Josef through Perkins’ nervous tics and the unnamed city’s white walls and modernist cubes. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.